Not Dead Yet

In the spring of 1997, shortly before he almost died, Bob Dylan
recorded Time Out of Mind, which upon its September release became
his most widely hailed album since 1975's Blood on the Tracks.
Later that fall--before it was too late, you might say--he was
presented with two lifetime achievement awards: the lucrative
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and later the prestigious Kennedy
Center Honor. He even made the cover of Newsweek like Bruce
Springsteen before him. A public recluse was a celebrity again.

Of course, Dylan hasn't been a true recluse since Blood on the
Tracks--just an enigma. Time Out of Mind is only his second
self-composed album of the '90s after nine in the '80s, but he tours 100
nights a year, with the reward of a cross-generational cult that
mushroomed when Jerry Garcia passed on--a cult for whom his boomer
aura is secondary at best to his ongoing trek through Americana.
Availability hasn't made him any more knowable, however;
notoriously, he just plays his music and gets out of there. For
Dylan, always prophetic in his aversion to the role model role,
this is ideal--he makes loads of money as a working musician,
recording and performing whatever he feels like, while avoiding all
the burdens of stardom except fame itself. "There's nothing to say
so I'm not going to say anything," he mumbled when he materialized,
a jowly wraith with a bodyguard, to receive his Gish in October. "I
wish she was still here. I'd loved to have made a movie with her.
And I feel very fortunate to receive this and I'm not sure what
I've done to deserve it but I'm going to try to keep on doing it."
That was his entire speech--quite a long one, for a sphinx.

So for Dylan, the December 1 show at New York's 1500-capacity
Irving Plaza was basically just another gig. If it was deemed
historic by the reawakened bigshots in attendance, that wasn't
because it was a benefit (all proceeds from the $65 door to
Harlem's Hale House) or "intimate" (Dylan's normal Manhattan venue
is the 3000-seat Beacon). It was because an epochal artist had
almost died, put out a rather good album, and received a lot of
awards--had reentered history, a/k/a the limelight, and in NYC to
boot.

And while many professed themselves transported, I'm just
impressed that the show was one of my top dozen of 1997--not up to
Sleater-Kinney or Ornette Coleman, but on a par with Pavement,
Cachao, John Prine. Although Dylanheads, who chalk up new live
songs like birdwatchers spotting rare flycatchers, knowledgably and
even excitedly discuss the evolving procession of anonymous studio
pros who fill his bands, I say new guitarist Larry Campbell and old
pedal steel player Bucky Baxter, new drummer David Kempner and old
bassist Tony Garnier are all just backing musicians, and backing
musicians are called that because they know how to stay out of the
way; I missed organist Augie Meyers, an occasional solo artist who
is, with the obvious exception, the strongest voice on Time Out of
Mind. In theory the kind of skilled journeymen Dylan goes for are
at least good for a great groove, but Dylan is too chameleonlike
for anything quite that satisfying. He wants many different grooves
played with competent fervor, and that's what he got.

Having brushed a blistering "Maggie's Farm" with the merest
hint of finger-snapping swing ("for . . . Maggie's"), Dylan also
took "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" a tad lounge--twice he
steered "I can hear that whistle blowin'" between a sob and a
blubber, only to dry off his timbre for "See that station-master
too." But this illusion vanished as he went spooky-lonesome on
"Cold Irons Bound," the first of four new songs scattered about in
Dylan's version of a promo blitz. The heads loved this subtle
number; casuals like me preferred the catchier "'Til I Fell in Love
With You," though it seemed kind of quiet for set-closer, and the
stark encore "Love Sick." Also among the 16 selections were "Rainy
Day Women" and "Highway 61," the '80s rocker "Silvio" (a live
staple that rocked harder at the Beacon in 1990), the Reverend Gary
Davis's "Cocaine" and the Stanley Brothers' "White Dove," the
callow "Ramona" transformed into a lovely Mexican waltz, and two
from Blood on the Tracks: a stuck-inside-of-Memphis "You're a Big
Girl Now" and, oh yes, "Tangled Up in Blue."

The heads are weary of this one, but as a song it doesn't
quit, and it occasioned the most thrilling music of the night, as
Dylan worried a four-note phrase on his acoustic guitar into a
medium-long solo of notable momentum and detail. On acoustic, Dylan
played like he sang, wobbling and cracking but always rich,
eccentric, perversely intelligent; it's as if when Jerry died he
transubstantiated his old-timey thoughtfulness over to Dylan in
exchange for two or three fingertips. On electric, unfortunately,
the leader's blues-rock cliches were often indistinguishable from
his sideman's. But whatever he's doing he's going to keep on doing
it. Others may attend his next New York shows to revisit their
youths, or glimpse eternal life. I just want to find out whether he
ever borrowed that spoonful of sugar from Eric Clapton.